HiLite

HiLite

School board president Layla Spanenberg said the PowerSchool app will replace myCCS over winter break, and people will be able to test the app before school begins. A tutorial for how to use PowerSchool was released for users on the Carmel Clay Schools website. Spanenberg said the PowerSchool app is more accessible and easier...

Senior Olivia Krall was far from the first person to think that something seems “off” about the Denver International Airport. After all, as the airport’s website explains, the place has underground tunnels,...

This recipe was submitted by juniors Claire Van Meter and Gretchen Fehn, who said they have a best friend baking tradition of baking a different recipe each year. They decided to bake these brownie treats this year because they wanted to make a dessert that didn't take a lot of time, but still looked...

Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Little Richard, Ray Charles, and The Rolling Stones—these are the names of the people and bands who contributed to the birth of the rock genre. The electric guitar, the bass, the drums and the lead vocals all create the sound that can make people so excited that they break into air guitar solos and sing off-key. However, although still popular, according to the latest Nielsen Music Report, rock music is less prominent with younger age groups, and rhythm and blues (R&B)/hip-hop has taken its throne. The report shows...

For gymnast and senior Hadyn Crossen, gymnastics started being a big part of her life at age two, when she started the sport. Flash forward to middle school, and colleges were looking at her. Crossen now sits with a scholarship to Eastern Michigan University, but she said the process is different from school sports.
She said, “It’s a little bit different from most sports. It starts pretty young....

As a 16-year-old girl, one might assume I spend countless hours on end shopping and going to the mall, as many of my peers do. To be fair, I was once in a similar place to those people, sleeping overnight outside waiting for the best deal on Black Friday and spending countless hours and money on gifts...

Nowadays, it seems like fake news is everywhere, especially in politics. President Donald Trump uses the term all the time (claiming that he invented the phrase), and the Senate Intelligence Committee warned of the Russian fake news threat on social media during recent congressional hearings with Facebook, Twitter and Google.

In fact, Collins Dictionary announced the phrase as the word of the year on Nov. 2. This isn’t particularly surprising, but it’s also important to recognize that amid what seems like a sea of fake news, there are more legitimate journalistic outlets that provide the public with timely, accurate information.

It’s important to realize that other scholastic journalists are doing the same thing. Contrary to popular belief, journalism is not dying. This summer, I went to the Al Neuharth Free Spirit and Journalism Conference as Indiana’s representative. There, I met 50 other amazing students (one from each state and D.C.) I met students who managed to pull their newspapers through despite no school funding whatsoever, students who spoke at national conventions, students who fought for their First Amendment rights when their school systems tried to censor them. Talking with these people was incredibly humbling; feeling the excitement radiating from their words was nothing short of eye-opening.

We met Pulitzer Prize winners, Freedom Riders from the civil rights era, and the editor-in-chiefs of National Geographic and the Washington Post. We toured the Newseum and the headquarters of USA Today. Most importantly, we met people who have dedicated their lives to spreading the truth.

These leaders in journalism emphasized again and again: journalism is not dying. Far from it, in fact. Print journalism may bring less revenue than before, but more content has simply moved online. In fact, this way, consumers can connect to news more than ever before: through websites and social media, news outlets can update readers in real time. (The New York Times even has its own Virtual Reality app that “puts you at the center of the stories that only we can tell.” I really love this app; kudos to New York Times!)

Admittedly, before I went, I was skeptical about the future of journalism as well. Yes, the challenges journalism faces are many. But the people I met convinced me that as long as even a small group is passionate about spreading the truth, journalism will never die.